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LANDSCAPE TO SEASCAPE: Shifting Assemblages of the River Wye Tim Acott and victoria Leslie

From the rain soaked, mist enshrouded summit of Pumlumon a winters journey starts...
Rain sodden and wind lashed, small streams meander across bare moorlands, inexorably working their way towards the distant coast. The upper reaches of the Wye sit in an area of oceanic and hyper-oceanic climate putting it the zone where fragments of lost Atlantic rainforests can be found.
The Cambrian mountains, a largely treeless landscape of bog, moorland and sheep are loved by some as a great wilderness and vilified by others as an ecological desert. Small tributaries work their way across the landscape coming together as the beautiful River Wye.
Hidden away in fragments across the upper Wye catchment away from grazing sheep, small streams and prevailing damp, warm conditions create isolated pockets of rainforest. Old, gnarled and twisted, ancient trees remnants of extensive primordial forest and woodland.
Reaching out for a tender embrace, moss and lichen-encrusted shepherds exert their agency to maintain a magical place and draw people's imagination into their secret world.
Emerging in the forest creatures stretch towards the light, silently contemplating their place and only revealing themselves for those prepared to wonder.
Precariously leaning across a bubbling brook, proudly wearing a cloak of moss, lichen and fern.
Majestic sentinels echo memories of a lost age while giving hope for the future.
The Wye has agency, providing a place for work, leisure and the imagination. Humans and non-humans drawn together by the river as it continues its eternal cycle from land to sea.
Fed by many tributaries the Wye flows and meanders through a country of fields, woods and settlements. A life-giving entity under threat from agricultural and sewage discharges as large multi-national companies locate operations in the catchment. The river is a repository for the corrupt and incompetent actions of uncaring elements of society. But a few with courage and conviction offer new hope and have summoned the Goddess of the Wye into being drawing attention to the emerging tragedy.
The lower Wye is a National Landscape and the river visits picturesque towns such as Ross-on-Wye connecting past, present and future with its identity shifting through the lens of culture, technology, work and leisure.
The importance of more-than-humans are anchored in the material fabric of places.
As the river progresses south it cuts its way through landscapes creating dramatic gorges lined with forest.
The spectacular nature of the Wye has had many relationships with people over time. It captivated Reverend William Gilpin in 1770 who framed his experiences in terms of 'picturesque beauty'. The river captured his imagination leading to new reasons for people to travel and the development of picturesque tourism in Britain.
Hidden remains of millstone quarry workings in the nearby valley. Was this one of the places where the millstones got loaded onto boats?
In the 18th and 19th centuries the river Wye was a focus of travel, there was no valley road between Chepstow and Monmouth until 1828. Larger boats called trows could reach as high as Brockweir, where there was a boatbuilding industry, before unloading onto smaller boasts to be carried upstream. The rivers agency allowed transport and communication from the sea into the interior facilitating trade in resources, goods and commodities. Prosperity was tied to travel opportunities afforded by the river and abundant resources in the area. As road and rail developed the river diminished in importance as an aid to commerce and development.
Today, rail has been displaced by road only fragments of the railway infrastructure remain, including Tintern Station now a cafe and tourist location. Industry of the 17th and 18th centuries have given way to assemblages dominated by leisure and recreation.
Tintern’s relationship to the river shifted from the spiritual significance of the Cistercian Abbey to an industrialised landscape in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries dependent on the river and a busy dock. The area was internationally important and produced wire for the first transatlantic cable in the 19th century. Industrial production, via the river, connected Tintern to places very far from the reality of the workers living in the community.
Tintern Abbey, now a ruin and only tourists making the pilgrimage.
Early industrialisation
The Angidy, a tributary of the Wye, has flourished since the 1560s and was one of the earliest places in the UK to industrialise. The industry flourished with the River Wye facilitating connections to the sea and distant markets. Charcoal was an important source of fuel and bark, iron, wire and tinplates were valuable commodities shipped to Chepstow and beyond. Today the remnants can be explored as part of a leisure trail marked up the Angidy Valley.
Once a thriving dock and boat building area, today the river is aesthetically important as a backdrop to the many leisure and recreation activities in the area. Abbey Mill is now an award-winning craft and shopping complex which has been trading since 1936. The importance of the river has shifted as its agency in the assemblage has altered from facilitating trade to being dominantly a site of wellbeing and leisure.
While the river might not hold the importance it once did in terms of trade, it still exerts its presence and agency for those willing to notice and engage.
The Wye cloaking herself in mist on a cold frosty day.
Woodlands cloak the valley sides, once a source of valuable raw materials today also important for health and wellbeing.
View from the Eagles Nest looking out across the River Wye towards the Severn Estuary, a viewpoint for tourists embarking on the Wye Tour in the 18th and 19th centuries
Today the viewpoint provides information and a safety rail.
The River Wye passing Chepstow Castle. Light, water, movement, patterns and reflections contribute to an ever changing spectacle of aesthetic value.
A beautiful bridge marks the rivers arrival in Chepstow and is also an important crossing point between England and Wales. The bridge is also the start of the Wales Coastal Path and represents a change from inland river to coastal seascape. Of course the river just continues its course unaware of the labels being attached to it.
But underneath the bridge the pristine, clear waters released from the sides of Pumlumon are now brown, bloated with sediments and detritus from its long journey. A gurgling, swirling mass...!
The River Wye has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world with a range of 13.4m at Chepstow bridge. Here the exposed riverbanks become visible as the tide goes out and the river nears the coast. Chepstow was once a thriving port and home to National Shipyard No 1. At the end of the First World War the shipyard was taking over by the Monmouthshire Shipbuilding Company and in 1920 it launched eight ships which represented the height of its production. Today little remains of the site as it is redeveloped for new housing. Memory of Chepstow as a shipbuilding town is consigned to plaques, monuments and in the archives and exhibits of museums.
The importance of understanding connections between the river and sea is captured in the Seal Sculpture Trail run as part of Chepstow Festival of Arts.
The gentle Wye meets the mighty Severn Estuary, their waters combining in the final journey back to the sea. Both were once vital conduits between the land and sea, allowing people and goods to make connections with distant markets. Today, as bridge and tunnel has replaced ferry the estuary and river are not the obstacle to land travel they once were. Technology has shifted allowing new assemblages to take form, and the Wye to acquire a different importance.
Crossing the mighty Severn Estuary
When does a river become the sea? The confluence of the Severn Estuary and River Wye is marked by the site of an ancient, ruined chapel dating back to the 13th Century. A fitting end for the miraculous Wye as it starts the next stage of its journey from river to sea and then back to sky, now cleansed rain will fall again on the heights of Pumlumon. New hope in a circle of life.
Sculptures at Black Rock helping to remember the importance of the water and its entanglements with people.
The end and beginning.
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